


terrible and beautiful

by glittagal333



Category: X-Men (Movies), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types, X-Men: Apocalypse
Genre: (it's pretty light), Implied Sexual Content, M/M, Swearing, X-Men Apocalypse Spoilers, but guess what!!! i wrote it, i don't know what this is, or if it's fucked up or not, take this thing and leave me be
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-21
Updated: 2016-05-21
Packaged: 2018-06-09 17:27:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6916588
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glittagal333/pseuds/glittagal333
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The boy is all grit and fire and anger from the moment they are first properly introduced, but there is no doubt that he is incredibly beautiful in a sort of unearthly, bewitching, dangerous fashion."</p>
<p>(Spoilers for X-Men: Apocalypse.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	terrible and beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> I saw Apocalypse today and this was the first thing I wanted to write. I dunno. It's kinda freeform-esque and a mish-mash of tenses and all over the place.  
> But that's how it came out of my head and I'm pretty happy with it, so here it is. I'm going back to my trash can now.
> 
> tumblr: http://bowdowntomama.tumblr.com

The boy is all grit and fire and anger from the moment they are first properly introduced. His face might tell an unknowing onlooker a different story – there is no doubt that he is incredibly beautiful in a sort of unearthly, bewitching, _dangerous_ fashion – but there is little softness left in him.

He does not speak his words: he spits them. Every single one. His fists are always clenched, eyes always bright and mocking, lips constantly curled into a smirk.

He is beautiful, but there is nothing left inside of him that matches that beauty.

“The first thing he did was swear at us,” Betsy had told Erik, noticing the older man’s gaze unmoving from Warren for quite some time. “in two languages. And then he threw a glass bottle. It’s lucky that En Sabah Nur found him – his wings were bloody and damaged. They could barely hold his weight.”

 

(“It’s not the same,” Warren would later tell Erik, drunk, voice beginning to fill with weeps. “Of course I’m grateful to be able to fly again. But it was seamless before – just like walking, or breathing. These wings are strong, but they’re heavy. I always feel them.”)

 

Although the entirety of Erik’s psyche was hell and grief and loneliness, he found himself drawn to the boy – Nur’s ‘Angel’ – despite the fact that he never seemed to want to keep any company. Warren’s personality was prickly, unused to kindness from anyone.  
And who could blame him? Labelled a freak and forced to fight like an animal every night for his life. He lashed out at people like a violent dog with cruel masters.

Humans were all the same. That much the two of them could agree on.

Many nights leading up to the culmination of Apocalypse’s long-awaited goal were the same – Erik would allow his own failures and losses and hatred to consume him to the point where he needed to get out of his own head, and his eyes would inevitably land on Warren in order to do so (who would almost always be a little drunk late into the night).  
The reactions were mixed – ranging from _what the_ _fuck are you staring at, pervert?!_ to the blonde stumbling to Erik’s side and whispering foul, far-too-tempting words into his ear, lips pressed too close to his face.  
But he was not sweet. For every slurred sentence that made something coil tight in the bottom of Erik’s stomach, something cruel would often be right around the corner.

“You think I’m pretty? You want to hold me down by the back of my neck while you fuck me?”

“You’re so fucking sad and desperate. How long has your wife been dead, again?”

(Erik wanted to crush those wings back into the boy’s bones – he settled for a backhand across the face that knocked Warren on to the floor, laughing and weeping.)

Things, despite all of his horrible words, never seemed to change.

 

The way that Nur adorns the boy with markings and armour and his very own pet name sometimes makes Erik wonder if even supposed Gods will weaken to beauty.

His Angel.

Warren never knows where to look, exactly, when approached by the being who gave him back his wings and a purpose – he can meet his gaze for a few seconds at a time before casting his eyes downward.  
It is the only time Erik has seen him act in any fashion other than brash.

A part of his mind wonders if Warren would ever calm his storminess for him one day. If he would ever see those huge, delicate eyes unclouded in anger for even a moment.  
But then he feels bad for denying the boy his anger.

 

“This is what I looked like. Before.”

Warren is drunkenly slumped into Erik’s side, which is nothing new at this point, holding a well-folded Polaroid photograph in one hand.  
Erik’s eyes drink the photo in – it is indeed a photograph of Warren, but instead of the metal wings that he’s grown familiar with he has white, feathered ones, not unlike...

“An angel.” he quietly says aloud before he can stop himself. The blonde nods into his shoulder.

“They called me beautiful. Even when I was beating the shit out of other mutants in a cage, covered in dried blood and sweat. Beautiful,” a pause, a hiccup. “Those wings, they were beautiful.”

A silence falls over them. Erik can’t quite tell if it’s easy or awkward or sad.

“They took my wings. They took my wings away from me..!”

Warren’s body begins to shake with sobs, burying his face further into Erik’s side, who doesn’t quite know what to do or what to say.  
The easiest answer is the one Nur has been telling them all along – _those who did you wrong will suffer, because you are strong, and only the strong will survive in my new world_ – but it feels fake coming out of his mouth rather than the deity’s.

“You are still beautiful.”

It surprises both of them. Erik hadn’t quite meant to say it aloud, but it had come out nonetheless, and there was no going back on it now. The blonde’s crying stops almost immediately, confusion quickly overwhelming drunken despair.

“What..?” his face emerges from where it was buried. “What did you just say?”

“Your new wings are a gift. A new strength, a new beauty. They will witness the birth of a new world, and they will be the last thing those who took your old wings away from you will see. Warren,” he tips the boy’s face upward under his chin. “you are beautiful, and angry, and broken and lonely. But when this is all over – when our enemies are nothing but dust scattered by the wind – you will still be beautiful. There is nothing that can change that.”

Warren just stares. And stares. And stares again.

“Oh,” he finally decides on. “Okay.”

 

Erik finally fucks him that night – holds him down by the back of his neck just like he’d always said he would, traces fingers over the skin where wing met body and feels Warren tense under him, _around_ him, like nothing else.  
The wings don’t turn out to be much of an obstacle. Erik calls him _beautiful, fucking beautiful_ , and revels in the sounds the words elicit from Warren.

His Angel.  
No – his Archangel; a terrible, fiery, destructive, beautiful creature, the most trusted of God. A maker and breaker of worlds, a fighter of wars.  
Breathtaking – but will blind and burn any who look too long.

 

(Erik doesn’t think about Magda. He can’t. It would swallow him up, and Warren is already doing that. He feels like he’s drowning in the boy, like this perfect visual is a trick, a curse.  
He has dreams about being encircled in those feathered wings – soft against his face, his hands – and then they become what Apocalypse made them.  
They tear at his skin, leaving blood to trickle down each metallic feather, and Warren just smiles.

“I will always be beautiful. There is nothing that can change that.”)

 

Cairo.  
The day of reckoning has finally arrived. As they are being addressed by their leader, their new God, Erik and Warren exchange knowing looks. The Archangel’s wings catch the sunlight, casting a glow down upon all of the Horsemen, but Erik’s eyes remain firmly on Warren.

Soon, it would all be over – this world would belong to the strong, the worthy. The ones who had been spat upon and used it to better themselves. The ones who had everything taken from them but refused to give up.

The terrible and the beautiful.


End file.
